The loss of formal jobs continued during March hand in hand with the economic crisis that caused a loss of purchasing power, a drop in consumption and a slowdown in commercial and industrial activity.
In the province, the first quarter ended with a loss of 8,600 formal job sources, according to the latest data from the National Ministry of Labor.
In January there were 532,800 formal workers and at the end of the third month that figure plummeted to 524,200.
The phenomenon is not a seasonal issue since in March of last year 530,400 had been reported. That is, in the year-on-year comparison, 6,200 formal positions were lost.
Of course, Córdoba was no exception, and was also far from standing out in the loss when taking the provinces as a whole. For example, Formosa lost, in the year-on-year comparison, 17.9% of its formal positions and La Rioja 10.7%. Very close to that percentage, Tierra del Fuego and Santiago del Estero fell 10.5% and 10%, respectively. A little further back, in Chaco they fell 8.2%. For Córdoba, those 6,200 positions lost between March of this year and the same month last year meant a decrease of 1.1%.
In January of this year, Córdoba had 532,800 formal jobs.
The Secretariat explained in its usual report that the information describes the evolution of the employed population that is declared in the different administrative records that make up the Argentine Integrated Pension System (Sipa).
The population with registered work in the country as a whole reached 13,264 million people in March 2024. In seasonally adjusted terms and in relation to the previous month, the number of people with registered work fell by 0.4%, which implies 53. 8 thousand fewer people.
The truth is that Córdoba pierced a barrier that it had not crossed for a long time: that of 530 thousand jobs. In February it had registered 529,900 and a month later, it plummeted to 524,200 (5,700 positions were eliminated from one month to the next).
At the national level, there were 10,191 million people with registered salaried employment (including the private sector, the public sector and work in private homes) and 3,073 million people with independent work (monotributistas and self-employed). A year ago there were 10,235 million people with registered salaried employment and 2,866 million people with independent work.
The group of people with registered salaried employment showed a drop of 0.3% between February and March, which translates into 26.4 thousand fewer people with salaried employment. Employment declines were observed in the private sector and in personnel in private homes (-0.4% and -0.6%, respectively). For its part, “the public sector remained stable,” explained the Secretariat report.
In March 2024, 524,400 formal jobs were detected in the province.
It is worth noting that independent work presented a drop in relation to the previous month of 0.9% (27.3 thousand fewer workers). According to the details, a decline was observed in each of the categories of independent work: in social monotax a loss of 1.4% was recorded; in monotax, 0.9%; and in self-employed workers, 0.2%.
The report highlights that self-employment is returning to the values prior to September 2023, when the extension of the maturities established between September and December 2023 was implemented – through the Afip. “That is, as in previous reports pointed out that the drop in the number of contributors to the self-employed regime was spurious, it is also necessary to make this clarification at this time, in which the increase in the number of contributors corresponding to March was only a reflection of the end of the extension period ”, he clarified.
On the other hand, the total number of workers with salaried employment decreased by 0.4% (45.6 thousand workers) in the year-on-year comparison. This contraction in salaried employment is due to the decline shown by the private sector and private household personnel (-1.1% and -3.1%). On the contrary, employment in the public sector expanded by 1.1% in the last twelve months.
Finally, in the year-on-year comparison, independent work as a whole expanded by 5.3%, representing 154 thousand workers. The whole of independent work was driven by the monotax categories (monotax grew 7.9%, and social monotax 1.6%). For its part, the number of contributors to the self-employed regime decreased 1.8% between March 2023 and March 2024.
